Brent Meeker wrote:
> > So, if continuity of consciousness is "real" it is reasonable to
> > expect that our theory of consciousness should allow for the
> > possibility of splitting, and that from a first-person point of view,
> > I-before-the-split would have an X% chance of becoming one copy and a
> > Y% chance of becoming another. That is not to deny, though, that the
> > split would happen both ways at once--in other words, each copy would
> > be correct in saying it was continuous with the single consciousness
> > before the split.
>
>This seems to me to be a meaningless question. What possible experiment
>could decide whether "I" had become the I-in-Washington and not the
>I-in-Moscow. The very hypothesis of the thought experiment makes this
>question unaswerable.
Yes, I agree--my point was just that a reasonable theory of consciousness
should not tell you that one is the "real" continuation while the other's
memories are false. The reason this is worth pointing out is that before
the splitting, the original can talk about the "probability" that he will
become one copy or the other, and usually the notion of probability involves
mutually exclusive alternatives...so the point about splitting both ways was
just to avoid giving the wrong impression.
Jesse Mazer
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Received on Sat Feb 10 2001 - 00:30:42 PST